The illegal option

If Governor Spitzer wanted to have sex with a younger woman then instead of hiring a prostitute he could have gotten a divorce and remarried, just like so many other rich and powerful men. Or he could have had an affair. Of these options hiring a prostitute is the least threatening to marriage but it's the only option which is illegal. In contrast, getting a divorce and remarrying a younger woman is so common it doesn't even stop a man from running for President.

Alex Tabarrok, "Trade-Offs," Marginal Revolution

Mr. Good Enough

When we’re holding out for deep romantic love, we have the fantasy that this level of passionate intensity will make us happier. But marrying Mr. Good Enough might be an equally viable option, especially if you’re looking for a stable, reliable life companion. Madame Bovary might not see it that way, but if she’d remained single, I’ll bet she would have been even more depressed than she was while living with her tedious but caring husband.

What I didn’t realize when I decided, in my 30s, to break up with boyfriends I might otherwise have ended up marrying, is that while settling seems like an enormous act of resignation when you’re looking at it from the vantage point of a single person, once you take the plunge and do it, you’ll probably be relatively content. It sounds obvious now, but I didn’t fully appreciate back then that what makes for a good marriage isn’t necessarily what makes for a good romantic relationship. Once you’re married, it’s not about whom you want to go on vacation with; it’s about whom you want to run a household with. Marriage isn’t a passion-fest; it’s more like a partnership formed to run a very small, mundane, and often boring nonprofit business. And I mean this in a good way.

Lori Gottlieb: Marry Him: The case for settling for Mr. Good Enough (The Atlantic, March 2008)

Marriage as a freedom of contract issue

It's no accident that the state began restricting and intervening in the marriage contract at the same time as it was restricting and intervening in economic contracts. It was of course the evil Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. who dissented in Lochner v. New York and who also upheld forced sterilization laws in Buck v. Bell (writing that "three generations of imbeciles is enough.") Economists don't like to talk about social externalities but the connection between economic and social regulation is very clear in the progressives.

I think it's time to restore freedom of contract to marriage. Why should two men, for example, be denied the same rights to contract as are allowed to a man and a woman? Far from ending civilization the extension of the bourgeoisie concept of contract ever further is the epitome of civilization. Our modern concept of marriage, for example, is simply one instantiation of the idea of contract.

Alex Tabarrok, "Laissez-Faire Marriage," at Marginal Revolution (30 November 2007)

...yes, I'm just now catching up on blog-reading, thanks for asking.

There are some rather ancient concepts of marriage that are explicitly tied to the idea of contract law, of course. When Carrie and I got married, we both signed one of these.

If you asked them, they could write a book

In a country where between 40 and 50% of marriages end in divorce -- depending on whose numbers you believe -- the institution of marriage is clearly suffering.

Carrie and I have been together for eleven years now, and married for nine; we've already beaten the published odds, and I hope and expect we'll be together for the rest of our lives.

But wrap your minds around this one, if you can:

Tonight, I'm driving to Asheboro, NC to attend a family function: a dinner celebrating the 67th wedding anniversary of my beloved aunt and uncle.

Amazing, no?